Milton: ‘God is looking over me’ in recovery
After catastrophic knee injury last season, UCF QB is keeping positive
God has been McKenzie Milton's surgeon and psychologist and sounding board and strength coach ever since that bleak Black Friday game against USF when he suffered one of the most horrific knee injuries we have ever seen.
God was there in the ambulance with the UCF quarterback when he was rushed to Tampa General Hospital, which just so happened to have the only Level 1 Trauma Center in West Florida with specialty surgeons onsite 24 hours a day.
If Milton's traumatic injury had happened in some podunk college town, he might be wearing a prosthetic today.
Thank you, Lord.
God was there as Milton woke up from the emergency arterial bypass surgery that restored blood flow to his lower leg and he pulled the sheet back just to make sure his leg had not been amputated. He saw a big metal external fixator attached to his leg, but his leg was still there.
Thank you, Lord.
God has been there spurring him on during the excruciating rehab sessions when the physical therapist is bending and flexing the reconstructed knee, painfully popping and breaking up the excessive scar tissue that has formed around his knee joint. “The rehab sessions hurt more than when the injury happened,” says McKenzie, the kid whom friends and strangers alike have come to know simply as KZ. “They’re a pain ... but it’s something I need to do to get to where I want to go.” Thank you, Lord.
“I have put my faith in God,” KZ says. “With the injury, my spirituality is where I’m laying my hat. What else do I got?”
Faith and football; the two entities have gone together for more than century now. Perhaps more than any sport, football — and particularly college football — has always had close ties to religion. Think about it: What sport other than football do you ever hear about the team chaplain? And in what other sport do you see such public displays of Christianity — players crossing themselves or pointing to heaven after touchdowns or both teams gathering at midfield after the game to kneel and pray together?
When Steve Spurrier, the son of a preacher, would win a big game at the University of Florida, he’d always begin his news conference with, “God has smiled on the Gators.” Iconic former Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden used to take his entire team to church twice at the beginning of each season — once to a predominantly white church and once to a predominantly black church as a way to teach his players that God does not discriminate.
Tim Tebow used his eye black during games at UF and the NFL to highlight Bible verses. I heard him once tell the congregation at the Real Life Church in Clermont that he believed God gave him a statistical wink after he put “John 3:16” on his eye black during a playoff victory against the Denver Broncos.
Tebow told the church gathering that John 3:16 was the No. 1 trending search on Google after the game and then pointed out some of the divine statistical coincidences: Tebow threw for 316 yards and averaged 31.6 yards per pass completion. The Steelers’ time of possession was 31 minutes, 6 seconds, and the mostwatched NFL wild-card game in history peaked with a 31.6 TV rating.
“God has a way of letting you know He is watching,” Tebow said then.
Another former Gator quarterback, Danny Wuerffel, told me once about a big game against Peyton Manning and Tennessee in 1996 at Neyland Stadium. The Gators faced fourth-and-11 from the Tennessee 35-yard line when Spurrier called a timeout and decided to go for it. With 107,000 screaming fans — then the largest crowd in NCAA history — going berserk, Wuerffel gazed across the field and saw an image of Jesus.
“While everything and everyone was consumed with the magnitude and chaos of the moment,” said Wuerffel, now the head of Desire Street Ministries, “I looked over and, in my mind, saw Jesus standing by the tunnel that went out of the stadium. He simply looked at me with soft and loving eyes. And while this was happening — the crowd screaming, Coach Spurrier pacing and the rain falling — I saw Jesus turn, go into the tunnel and walk out of the stadium. In my own mind, I walked across the field and followed Jesus out of the stadium.
“It was such a freeing and amazing feeling to know that in the midst of one of the most pressurized situations in college football, I was absolutely content to be a part of it — or not be a part of it. I didn’t have to have it; it wasn’t my obsession. That is a liberating thought … when we realize we are playing for an audience of one, who happens to the God of the universe.
“Then Coach Spurrier called a post pattern, I threw a long touchdown pass to Reidel Anthony and we went on to win the game, the national championship, the Heisman Trophy, everything.” getting the first MRI of his leg following the emergency surgery to restore blood flow. Doctors read that initial MRI and it showed that both meniscuses in his knee were torn and the hamstring had been ripped away from the bone.
In the car afterward, KZ and his mother decided to pray that God would completely heal his leg. He went to church on that following Wednesday night and church leaders prayed over him, too. And then he went back for a follow-up MRI and the results were, well, divinely different.
“Three things the doctors [initially] said were torn were perfectly fine,” KZ says. “Both meniscuses were good and the hamstring was back attached, which can’t medically happen without surgery. To me, that was the moment I saw God working. Doctors can’t explain why everything wasn’t torn, but I feel like I know why. … God is looking over me; I totally believe that.”
As Milton continues to rehab, he says he has drawn inspiration from teammates, UCF fans and thousands of others who have sent him their thoughts, prayers and get-well wishes.
A couple of months ago, Milton got some added motivation when he read about Alex Ruiz, a high school quarterback from California, who suffered a similarly dislocated knee and severed an artery after